Partner of the Week: ChildFund International Kenya

Posted in Partner of The Week on September 7, 2017

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ChildFund International Kenya works with local partner organisations, governments, corporations and individuals to create the safe environment children need in order to thrive. Their mission is to empower deprived, excluded and vulnerable children and young people to improve their lives and become young adults, who bring lasting and positive change in their communities. ChildFund International Kenya works through 38 local partners reaching approximately 1 million children, families and community members.

ChildFund Kenya has been an Aflatoun International partner since 2008. The Aflatoun approach fits very well with ChildFund’s programme principles by advancing and protecting the rights of children, engaging and inspiring them to be agents of change in their communities. The organisation now recommends the Aflatoun approach for life skills development of 6-14 year olds and has become part of work preparation for 15-24 year olds. The number of schools where Aflatoun’s method is active has increased from 60 in 2016 to 79 this year. An additional 38 teachers were trained bringing the total number of active teachers to 158. ChildFund’s plan is to expand Aflateen, the programme targeting teenagers. Their goal is to reach 15 new secondary schools for a possible three-year programme.

Children growing their own vegetables for sale

Growing vegetables at the Aflatoun club

Kyamulendu school, in Machakos County, has one of the largest Aflatoun clubs with 100 children actively participating in the clubs activities. The school is located in an area that experiences prolonged periods of drought but this has not stopped the children from engaging in an agricultural enterprise. The school has one of the biggest financial enterprises in the entire programme. Since the beginning of this year, children from the Aflatoun club have also turned this into a social enterprise by buying school uniforms for eight poor students who couldn’t afford them. Their enterprise involves growing of vegetables, bananas and spices. In order to ensure that weeds and other farm waste is not thrown away, the children also keep rabbits whose number currently stands at 36. The children have used the skills learned in the Aflatoun clubs to plan and manage all the activities in their project.

They even go to their crops and rabbits during school holidays by dividing into four groups that work each week of the school holidays ensuring that the sale of vegetables goes on and the rabbits are taken care of — Aflatoun club teacher Winfred Sil